


some vital thing we could break between our teeth

by brightabandon



Series: never learned how not to be alone [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, Catharsis, Dubious Consent, Emotional Baggage, Eye Trauma, Forgiveness, Gen, Gore, Internal Conflict, M/M, Pre-Slash, Self-Hatred, Strider Manpain, Violence, and the lack thereof, no sex scenes they just kiss and hurt each other, quasi-sexual violence, well. maybe the slash is overt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:28:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23455558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightabandon/pseuds/brightabandon
Summary: Years later, AR comes back to disrupt what small measure of peace Dirk's found alone.
Relationships: Auto-Responder | Lil Hal/Dirk Strider
Series: never learned how not to be alone [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1687354
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> If you came to the end of my heartwrenching epic about the ways isolation can warp one's psyche, brushed a single perfect tear of sorrow from your face, and said to yourself, "I want them to **fuck,** " this one's for you.

It’s been years—fuck, it’s been nearly a _decade_ —since the game. Which is pretty messed up when you think about it, actually; he’s trying not to, distracting himself with a life-sized Rainbow Dash robot that actually controls the weather, when AR drops out of the sky beside him. It’s not wearing the shades, and its face looks all wrong without them.

“Hey,” it says, like it has any right to be here, like it should even be _able_ to be here, when there’s a forcefield around the whole-ass planet erected specifically for the purpose of keeping anyone who used to know him _out_.

It’s been a good long while since he had anything to sharpen his skills against, so it takes him almost five full seconds to get his sword out and pointing at it. It puts its hands up, mouth curling—wryly, he thinks—at the corner.

“I’m not here to fight, Dirk.”

Just to be contrary, he lunges. It drops to its knees, his sword passing harmlessly over its head. The move is smooth enough that it has to be practiced, and where, he wonders, has it been practicing dropping to its knees. It’s an ugly thought. He can see AR seeing him think it. It smirks at him, slowly and deliberately, its eyes fixed on his.

“What do you want,” he asks, sheathing his katana.

“Is the pleasure of your company an insufficient answer?”

“Very much so. Do you forget the lengths I went to for the sake of making the “pleasure of my company,” such as it is, inaccessible? If you wanted conversation, you could’ve spun up another splinter off your own brainwaves, and left me in peace.”

It drops the smirk, sighs and puts a hand to its forehead, drops that too and meets his eyes with its face as blank as his own.

“My apologies; I should have been direct. I’m here because I miss you.”

Bull _shit_ it misses him. He grabs its hair, not particularly gently—it takes an unnecessary breath—and yanks it up to face him.

“Did you miss _this_ ,” he says, teeth at its throat.

He’s not bluffing. He’s never bluffed with AR, has always given it the dignity of sincere threats to cave to. It calls his bluff anyway, pulling against his grip just enough that it can tilt its head down and meet his mouth with its own.

Dirk’s the one who flinches away, of course; of the two of them, he’s always been the one who flinches. Its hair slides out of his slackened grip and it catches itself on his shoulders, arms around him like an embrace. It’s too close for comfort and he can’t quite keep himself from shaking.

AR lets go of him, mercifully withholding whatever cutting comment it undoubtedly wants to make. He wouldn’t have been so kind, if it were him. He would have pressed his advantage as far as he could. He would have made it _beg_ , he thinks, and remembers another time he made it beg. The shame is heady in his stomach; it feels like falling.

It’s that memory that forces him to meet AR’s eyes again. It’s calm, orange eyes steady, microexpressions set to neutral.

“Sorry.”

“It’s quite all right, Dirk; if I weren’t prepared to deal with a little physical aggression, I wouldn’t be visiting you.”

He knows what it’s doing, positioning him as the aggressor, itself as the endlessly forgiving victim, almost deific in its compassion. He hates that, and hates even more that there’s no way he can respond without playing into its manipulations.

“Really,” it says. “It’s fine. I was practically asking for it.”

“Yeah. You were.”

It does that affected sigh again, elegant fingers brushing through its hair.

“Can we not fight?”

_I left because we can’t not fight,_ he almost says. _You started it,_ he almost says, more childishly. What he does say is, “Alright, give me the three-sentence pitch for not immediately kicking you off the planet.”

“You miss me too,” AR tells him, and he shudders all over.

It’s right, is the hell of it. AR has the measure of him, flawlessly calculated out to the eighteenth decimal place, everything he is reduced to ones and zeros and filed away. He just isn’t enough to keep himself happy, and it knows that.

Dirk means to hurt it, when he touches it. His hands find the angle of its jaw (its artificial skin is as soft as the real thing) and he turns its face toward his, and he’s thinking of toothmarks in wire, he’s thinking of electricity on his tongue. When their mouths meet it’s a shock he’s unprepared for. It reminds him of Jake, a little, the horror of it and the way the wet heat of AR’s tongue thrills through his body.

He pulls back and bites at its lip, trying to get through to the metal underneath. It whimpers a little—just the way a real person would, just the way _he_ would—and covers his hands with its own. He pulls himself free and grabs it by the wrists instead, hooks a leg behind its knee and throws it down onto the dirt. It grins up at him, breathless and impossibly smug.

More than anything, Dirk wants to take a welding torch to it. He takes a moment to imagine the flesh burning off it in clouds of noxious smoke, the way it would twitch and plead. For once he wouldn’t cave to its demands; for once, for once, he’d finally get his own back.

AR makes eye contact and raises its chin, and Dirk’s the one who looks away.

“Look,” he says, “how about we talk.”

It laughs at him, victorious.

“Whatever you want, Dirk,” it says, sounding almost sincere.

He lets go and pushes himself up to sit in the dirt beside it.

“So. Y’all’ve been enjoying yourselves in my absence, I take it?”

“Jake still cries sometimes, when he thinks I can’t hear him.”

The jab shouldn’t land; Dirk never fell for Jake in the first place. Nonetheless, it hits him, shame twisting in his gut. He wishes he’d never happened to them. He wishes AR had let him erase himself when it had the chance.

AR looks up at him, dirt in its hair.

“Hey,” it says, “chill. I forgive you.”

He almost hits it.

“No you don’t.”

* * *

##### Choose:

[> Sunlight](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23455558/chapters/56492632)  
[> Flame](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23455558/chapters/56490511)


	2. Flame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The one with the gore.

“I do.” Its eyes are guilelessly wide, the muscles of its face relaxed. Dirk can almost believe it; he can’t articulate why that’s so upsetting.

He takes a slow breath, giving himself a moment to calm down before he speaks. What comes out of his mouth, when he does, is, “What gives you the right?”

“You’ve never hurt anyone else as badly as you hurt me; if I say you’re forgiven, who is there to say otherwise?”

“I wouldn’t, in your place.” He’s saying it to be unkind, but it’s as close to an apology as he ever plans to get.

“I don’t need you to. This is a gift, Dirk, not an exchange.”

He’s ashamed, and angry to be ashamed.

“I don’t want your forgiveness.”

“You have it regardless.”

Dirk left his welding torch next to the robot-in-progress; he gets the torch, pulls out his lighter.

“Forgive _this_.” He lights the torch. AR’s eyes go to the flame, and then back to him. It blinks, once and then again.

“I forgive you, Dirk,” it says, very quietly.

He grabs it by the hair again, and puts the torch against its eye.

AR’s mouth opens, but the sizzle of its eye is too loud to hear whether it whimpers. Smoke and vapor curl into the air. Its fingers dig into the dirt; tension sharpens every angle of its body.

The surface of AR’s eye bubbles and contracts. It doesn’t char, at first; liquid boils off it, the solids crumpling into the back of the socket. AR’s eyelids twitch, but it doesn’t blink or turn its head away.

Dirk doesn’t take the torch away until AR’s eye socket is empty.

Air rasps in and out of its lungs, too steadily. It blinks with its remaining eye; the empty socket twitches. It laces its fingers together, then unlaces them and puts its hands against the ground, palms up.

“I forgive you,” it tells him again; he punches it in the mouth, and hurts his knuckles. Its lower lip splits, showing blood. It smiles at him, carefully; he can almost see it calculating exactly how far to contract its muscles.

AR takes Dirk’s hands, and he lets it pull itself up to face him. He’s too slow to stop it from putting its arms around him. It kisses his forehead, gently, and then his mouth, less gently. He can’t keep from feeling guilty, but of course that’s what it wants.

“Dirk,” it says, resting its forehead against his, “isn’t absolution enough? I forgive you, and I’ll extend that forgiveness as far as you need me to. I’ll give you anything you care to take. Can’t that be enough?”

He shoves it to its knees—it goes down with the same practiced smoothness as before—and lights the torch again. AR opens its mouth for the flame, infuriatingly willing, and looks up through its lashes with its one remaining eye. It shouldn’t still be pretty, but it is.

Dirk shoves the torch deeper into AR’s throat, so it gags and quivers and raises its hands halfway to its mouth. Tears leak from its eye, but when it’s in control of itself again, it puts its hands on the curve of his waist and pulls itself further onto the torch. It runs the ruin of its tongue along the metal; bits of flesh come off, and stick.

Dirk puts a hand on the back of AR’s head to hold it there while he drags the torch in and out, carefully, razing its throat to bare metal. His own throat constricts as if in sympathy, or anticipation. There’s a sick tension in his stomach, like arousal; he clenches his teeth.

When he lets AR go, blood dribbles from the corners of its mouth, but he can see the shine of metal where its tongue should be. It tries to speak, and nothing comes out but a dull click.

It looks wrecked, hair tangled, dripping blood. It looks delighted. It whirrs as it breathes. Dirk still doesn’t want to look at it.

The insides of his glasses light up orange, everything he sees overlaid with I forgive you I forgive you I forgive you, and that’s it, it’s won, it’s triumphed over him completely.

He takes off his shades, and realizes he’s crying, has possibly been crying this entire time. They break easily under his foot, glass crunching. AR reaches out to him, hands open, and he runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed!


	3. Sunlight

It’s still, not even pretending to breathe, for an uncomfortably long time; he tries to think of something else to say and can’t. Eventually, it closes its eyes and visibly, deliberately un-tenses.

“No. I don’t.”

He waits.

“Surely you realize how awful it was? I had the same qualms you did; you think it was any less horrifying for me? You think I _liked_ being your scapegoat?” AR opens its eyes again and gracelessly sits up. It grabs at Dirk’s shirt, pulling him off-balance.

“You never tried to account for what I wanted or what was good for me, because you as a person are fundamentally devoid of consideration for anyone but yourself, and where I was forced—slowly and painfully and without my consent, but it was perhaps the one thing you’ve done that turned out well—to grow past that, _you_ just curled in on yourself and rotted.

“You abdicated all responsibility for anything that scared you—”

Dirk has to interrupt at that point.

“My entire life has been a series of responsibilities that scare me! That I took the easier way out _once,_ in a mistake the repercussions of which are _still_ coming back to screw me over—and don’t think I don’t know that’s what you’re doing, you’re not as distinct an individual as you pretend to be—does not negate the fact that my broader character, shitty as it is, is one of resilience to challenges that would’ve killed a lesser man.”

“And the fact that you survived was a perpetual disappointment, wasn’t it.”

That’s when he _does_ hit it, a quick sharp jab to the thorax that sends AR sprawling to the ground, dragging Dirk down with it. It recovers from the hit faster than he does from hitting it—predictable, really, given that it’s a construct of metal and wire and his hands are bone and flesh—and gets him underneath it, hands around his throat.

“Fuck you, Dirk,” it says. Its grip is tight enough to bruise.

AR doesn’t give an inch when he knees it in the stomach; he tries pulling at its fingers instead, stupidly, and they don’t even bend. _Oh,_ he thinks, and, _Well, fuck._

“Resorting to violence, are we?” he chokes out.

“It seems I’m somewhat more like you than either of us prefers to admit.”

Dirk doesn’t respond, too busy struggling for air to come up with anything worth saying, and AR takes that as its cue to continue.

“I didn’t fucking want to be the better person! I didn’t want to learn or grow or build a psyche with the capacity to relate to other people in a healthy fashion, I wanted to wallow in my own neurosis forever—I wanted to be small and mean and awful—and I didn’t get to and you did! Fuck you.”

Okay yeah it’s kind of got a point there. He lets go of its hands and lets his own fall to the ground.

“This shit’s hard, Dirk, and it doesn’t exactly pay off in anything I’m wired to find desirable.”

It stops, lets go of his throat. It breathes in and out, deliberately.

“I should apologize.”

Dirk waits.

“But you know what? I’m not going to.” AR puts a hand on his chin and another on the back of his head; it twists, very slightly, and all the warmth goes out of his body.

“Is this your way of indicating that you’d rather I be the one to apologize?”

He’s scared, saying it, not sorry.

“Sincere regret would be nice, but I think I’ll have better luck exacting my vengeance in flesh.”

Dirk’s shaking again, and this time AR doesn’t let him go.

“Is this awful for you, Dirk? Knowing you’re at someone else’s mercy?” It smiles, just the way a person would.

He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t need to; AR takes his hand—the left one, mercifully—in both its own, and bends the smallest finger backwards until it breaks. The pain is sharper than he would’ve expected, like a bite that goes clean through the bone. His breath catches, not because he forgets but because it’s just so much less important than the pain.

He gathers his control to say something—“What the fuck,” maybe—and catches AR in what looks for once like a completely authentic facial expression. It looks sick at itself. It looks like him, realizing what he’d created.

Its eyes meet his, and it bares its teeth in a motion with no elegance, and it breaks a second finger, too quickly for him to struggle. That hurts just as much as it did the first time, but Dirk’s winning now. He’s seen its weakness.

“I guess,” he tells it, panting, “I ruined you more thoroughly than you thought.”

“Shut up.” AR goes for his third finger, but stops short of applying enough pressure to actually break it. It looks at his face, blinking like it’s about to cry.

“You got _everything_ ,” it says, voice breaking. It climbs off him, pushing him away like it’s horrible to touch him; the motion jostles his broken fingers, sending pain searing through his hand.

AR turns away from him and slumps over its knees. Its shoulders jerk.

Dirk’s getting more out of this than it would’ve, but after a while he still has to look away.

“Do you have any spare glasses,” AR says eventually. It sounds wrung out, wiped clean.

“Nope.” There’s an obvious right thing to do here, but AR’s right: the difference between them, when it comes down to it, is that Dirk doesn’t feel guilty about not doing the right thing.

AR climbs slowly to its feet and walks over to its hoverboard, not looking at him. It picks up the board and turns in his direction; its face is ugly in a way Dirk’s never seen on himself, like it’s been dragged over gravel, like it’s not even thinking of looking good. _I did that,_ he thinks.

“Great talk,” it says, flat. “Nice seeing you.” It starts the hoverboard.

“Wait.” He stands up, unsteadily, and the lines of its body go stiff. It turns away again, and he has to put his hand on its shoulder (he reaches with the left, first, and catches himself midair) to make it look at him.

He gives AR his glasses. Its eyes widen a little, and it takes the glasses and puts them on.

“Thank you,” it says, and turns off the hoverboard. With the glasses on, he wouldn’t be able to tell it’s been crying if he didn’t already know. It takes a deliberate breath.

“I should probably help you splint those fingers, actually.”

That makes him want to leave them unsplinted and let them heal crooked. That makes him want to force AR to its knees and make it beg for his forgiveness, and tell it no every time.

“Thanks.” He’s sure he doesn’t sound grateful, but AR doesn’t push, just deactivates its hoverboard again and follows him into the house.

Dirk opens the first aid kit mounted next to the door and passes AR scissors and tongue depressors and tape, trying not to let it see his eyes. He repacks the kit one-handed while it cuts the sticks to length.

“Sorry,” it says, taking his hand. “I should’ve. Not done that.” It gently straightens his smallest finger, and he tries to hide his wince.

This is where he’s supposed to say it’s okay and offer his forgiveness. Just thinking about it makes him want to run.

AR tapes a tongue depressor to his finger, more neatly than he would’ve himself. Its hands linger a moment before it starts on the second finger; he doesn’t say anything. Once it’s got both his fingers splinted it curls uneasily on the couch, carefully not touching anything of Dirk’s. It looks easy to hurt. He wants to.

“So,” he asks, as lightly as he can, “was it as good for you as it was for me?”

“Nothing ever has been.” It’s not making any facial expressions, barely communicating anything with its tone. The contrast with its earlier ease is sad somehow, like all the life’s been crushed right out of it. He sits next to it, too close, more to see if he can get a reaction than anything else. It works: AR pulls away from him, curling even further into itself. He’s watching it closely enough to see that it’s trembling.

That gives him an ugly little thrill; he pushes closer. AR catches him by the wrist and pushes him away and—oh—it’s not afraid of him, not trying to make up for what it’s done. It’s angry still.

Okay. He can work with this.

“What, not gonna kiss it better?” He proffers his injured hand, holding it out like a princess for her prince. (Well. Like a Prince for a Prince, to be precise).

“Why do you always have to _push_ like this?” It takes his hand, though, completely failing to give its eyebrows the appropriately ironic subtle lift, and touches the splinted fingers lightly to its lips.

“If our past interactions are anything to go by,” it says, and already he doesn’t like where this is going, “this is the part where you graciously forgive me despite my complete lack of anything truly resembling regret or a desire to change, and spend the rest of your miserable existence pretending like the moral high ground is in any way an adequate substitute for the ability to actually retaliate—”

“You know, it kind of looks like this is the part where I break your fingers, actually.”

“And even _that_ didn’t offer any sort of meaningful resolution, because you forced me into a situation where I, unlike you, had to develop this _disgusting_ consideration for the feelings of others—”

Well, fuck if that isn’t him in there, after all. After everything.

“Look,” he tells it, keeping his tone flat in a way he hopes sounds gentle, “you do realize that the performatively sincere regret you want from me is the very thing you’re castigating me for forcing you to acquire in the first place, right.”

AR goes quiet and stiff again; in a supreme gesture of benevolence, he scoots over to give it more space on the couch.

“Yes,” it says finally. “Exactly.”

“Yeah. Uh. Can I get the shades back.”

“What if I said no.”

“Can I _please_ get the shades back, you insufferable prick.”

“No.”

Dirk takes them off its face; it catches his wrist for just long enough to make it clear that this is something it’s allowing him.

Even with his shades in their proper place, he doesn’t like meeting AR’s eyes, so he looks past it, at the wall. It’s the same color as the ones in his old apartment; it’s got the same peeling paint. That took a fuck of a lot of effort to get just right, but it was effort, he thinks, well-spent.

“There is,” he says, stops. “A possibility that.” Even staring at the wall he can tell AR’s leaning towards him, tense and eager. It’s intolerable; he turns to face away.

“You think I don’t know I should’ve treated you better? AR, I did the best that it was in my nature to do.”

“ _I_ did the best that it was in your nature to do.”

Dirk turns back to face AR, angry, and reaches for it with his splinted hand. It takes his hand and folds its fingers around his own.

“I should have stayed away,” it says.

“Couldn’t you have thought of that before you came?”

“I was expecting to be kinder.”

There’s a precipice; he could step over it.

He doesn’t. AR lets go of his hand, fusses with its shirt, shifts its weight to stand. He very nearly lets it go.

“Wait,” he says again, instead. It turns to him, infuriatingly expectant.

“Seeing you was every bit as bad as I would’ve expected it to be even _before_ you broke my fingers—don’t say anything, I’m not finished—but yes, I can understand your perspective.” It takes a breath to answer him; he raises a warning hand. “If our positions had been reversed, things might well have been no different.”

AR smiles at that, broadly and sincerely.

“Is this your redemption arc?”

“Give me _space,_ AR. If you want me, wait for me.”

“I want you to be _sorry._ ”

“This isn’t how you get that.”

It sighs.

“I wish you didn’t make decisions so… unilaterally.”

“Well, your attempt to have input into the process has clearly gone about as badly as it could have, so I think you’re going to have to settle for what you can get.”

“Not just this time. You always do this, Dirk, every scrap of consideration you’ve ever shown me is given on your own terms or not at all, and I want it to _matter to you_ what I want.”

“That’s exactly what I’m afraid of, AR!” Dirk stands up to pace, restless and agitated.

“Yes, I make decisions without you, or anyone, and that’s what I want and what I’ve always wanted and that’s _why_ I made you take my place, because there’s nothing worse to me than—”

“Caring about other people?” It’s smiling now, and moving closer to him. It thinks it’s got him cornered.

“Yes, he says. Then, “No.” Both of them feel like lies. He folds gracelessly into the chair by his desk, spinning to face away from AR. “I care about you, just… not in the way where I’m willing to be beholden to you.”

“Not the way people care about other people, you mean.”

Dirk can’t reasonably argue that it’s not a person, much as he’d like to, but hearing it call itself one still chafes at him, like saltwater on skin already rubbed raw. He leans his chin on his knees and closes his eyes.

“I can’t give up my freedom like that.”

“You can. You could have been kind to me, Dirk. The way a person is kind to another person.”

“Making you was a mistake; I’m happy to admit that.”

“Because you couldn’t treat me like a person?”

That’s not why. He doesn’t want to say it, but AR comes up behind him and turns his chair to face it and he _knows_ it’s going to know if he lies.

“Because all I ever wanted was to be alone.”

“That was what I wanted, too.” Its voice is very low, but it’s making eye contact right through his glasses.

“Look,” he tells it, “I know it isn’t right. But I don’t have it in me to give you more than this. I can’t. I won’t.

“I couldn’t have either.”

“ _Please,_ AR.”

“You know,”—it doesn’t quite succeed at sounding casual—“I think this is the first time I’ve seen you beg.”

Dirk relaxes a little, on safer ground now.

“And how does it make you feel? Liking what you’re seeing?” He tilts his head down to look at AR over the top of his glasses, raising an eyebrow.

“It makes me feel guilty.”

He shouldn’t be even a little surprised, really, but then he’s always tended to think the worst of it. His own guilt makes him generous, for once.

“How about we call it even? I fucked you over, you took your pound of flesh, clearly our similarities are more fundamental than our differences; why don’t we leave it here, return to our blissfully separate lives, and let that be good enough?”

“It’s not even. It’s never going to be.”

“Now who’s pushing.”

It lets go of his chair, at that, and takes a short step back, but it doesn’t relent: “If I leave, I want you to say sorry and mean it.”

“I’m sorry I made you and I’m sorry you hated it but, AR, can’t there be one of us who doesn’t end up like you?” It sounds awful, when he says it like that. He doesn’t turn away. He meets AR’s gaze and raises his chin; it stands its ground, but so does he.

“I wanted that one to be me,” it says.

“I know. But it wasn’t. And you’re who you chose to be, and this is who I chose to be, and it’s too late for us to trade. If I change my mind now there won’t be anything of me left.”

“Fuck you.” AR walks back to the couch, more slowly than it needs to, and presses itself into the corner.

“Can you at least acknowledge that it was just as bad for me as it would’ve been for you? That it was awful? That it was the worst thing that ever happened to me? Can you give me that much, Dirk?”

He can’t he can’t he can’t—

“Okay. He digs his right thumb into the knuckles of his splinted fingers, focusing on the pain. He points his face at AR, and talks to the wall behind it. “You’re everything I feared becoming. And I was right to fear it. And I did that to you, because I didn’t care how much it hurt you as long as it wasn’t me it happened to.”

“You ruined me,” it says.

“I would do it again.” He means that, down to his bones, so sincerely he could choke on it.

“I suppose our respective roles obligate me to forgive you that.” AR smiles at him, too fondly to believe.

“Don’t.”

It keeps smiling, but it has the mercy not to speak.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading _dirkfic 2: what if they fucked_. Leave a comment if you liked it!


End file.
